Obsession (Explicitly Yours 4)

“Calm down, sir,” he said. “No need to overreact.”

“Overreact?” Beau curled a hand into a fist. “I drove all the way from Dallas to surprise her. That’s eight goddamn hours. If I call her, it’ll ruin everything.”

“She’s your wife?” the man asked. “Let me see your license. The names match, we won’t have an issue.”

Beau refrained from rolling his eyes. His wallet burned a hole in his suit jacket, but showing them his ID with a name that didn’t match hers could mean the end of the conversation. “Well, actually, I don’t have my license on me—”

“Didn’t you say you drove here?”

“Right. Yes. Sometimes I forget it, though.” Beau slid his wallet out. He’d be needing it anyway. He made a show of looking through it, keeping it close to his chest. “That’s what I thought. I left it at home. All I have in here is cash.” Beau looked up. “Plenty of it.”

Both of them shook their righteous heads. “Not going to help you here,” the man said.

Beau put his wallet away and leaned his elbows on the counter. “Look. Her name is Lola Winters. Just look her up.”

Matilda typed with agonizing slowness. She cocked her head at the computer screen. “What’d you say the first name was?”

“Lola.” The look on Matilda’s face told Beau something was amiss. It occurred to him that Lola had a reason to stay hidden—him. And he wasn’t supposed to know her real name. He added, “It could also be under Melody.”

“Here she is.”

“Seriously?” Beau asked, taken aback. Confident as he’d been, the news still hit him right in the chest and sent his heart racing with excitement.

“Yeah.” The man had been watching over Matilda’s shoulder, and he looked up from the computer screen. “You sound surprised.”

Beau covered his ass with the biggest smile he had—and it was genuine too. In no time at all, he’d lay his eyes on that black, shiny hair, those big, lying blue eyes. “I’m just eager to see her. Very, very eager.”

“I remember her,” Matilda quipped. “Checked in last night because of the storm. She didn’t mention anything about work.”

“That’s great,” Beau dismissed with a deep inhalation. “Which room? I have flowers in the car, and they need—”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head at the computer, her eyebrows triangled in the center of her forehead. “She already checked out.”

His heart stabbed him right in the chest, that fickle motherfucker. Bragg had warned him about this—people on the run rarely spent two nights in one spot. But Beau had convinced himself that on some level, Lola wanted him to find her. That maybe, somehow, she wasn’t really on the run. She was just drifting. “When?”

“This afternoon, right after the storm let up. Not too long ago. That’s weird she didn’t mention it to you, especially since she had to work today. What’d you say she does, anyway?”

Beau closed his eyes. He pictured her running away from him through Middle-American wheat fields, her head over her shoulder as she smiled, waved at him. Ha. Gotcha. Not knowing where she was had been torture, but just missing her by a few hours was almost worse. If he’d flown to Dallas right when he’d arrived at the airport. If he’d driven twice as fast.

“Did she leave a note?” he asked evenly. “Anything behind?”

“I didn’t check her out, but I haven’t seen—”

“How about lost and found?”

The girl looked up at her dad.

“Why don’t you just call her?” he suggested, watching Beau carefully. “Maybe she went back home or moved to another hotel in the area.”

Beau opened his mouth to make his demands. He wanted to speak to whoever’d checked her out. To see surveillance footage. To check the room she’d stayed in for clues. He took a deep breath and walked outside, leaving behind two suspicious expressions. With the time difference, he’d lost two hours between California and there, and it was almost six o’clock at night.

Beau extracted his cell phone from his suit pocket, cringing as if it were painful. He called Bragg and spoke first. “She’s gone. Are there any new charges?”

“Not since last night.”

“Check again.” Beau ignored the detective’s sigh and waited on the line. He could still catch her, no matter where she was. If she was driving, he would fly. If she moved fast, he would move faster.

“Nothing, boss,” Bragg said into the phone. “You going to stay out there or come back?”

Beau hung up the phone and stared at the black screen. He didn’t know where to go from here or if he could go through this again another night. How the fuck could she do this to him? Toy with him this way? He purposely chose not to see the irony in the situation.

He needed to think—to be in a clean, uncluttered place, alone with his thoughts—and to sleep. He’d stayed at The Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis before. He wasn’t sure how far it was. There had to be a nearby city with something upscale. But Lola had stayed at the Moose Lodge last night, and suddenly, feeling close to her seemed more important.

He returned to the front office. “I’m sorry if I seemed angry,” he said and, to his surprise, he meant it. By not giving Beau information, the young girl had been protecting Lola. No matter how mad he was, Beau could only hope everyone else Lola had encountered so far had done the same. “It’s just, my wife—” He practically choked on it. My wife.

“Poor thing. You can’t even spend a night without her,” the girl said—alone again, a hopeless romantic again. “Are you going to be all right?”

Beau nodded. He took his wallet out once more. “Can I get a room for the night?” he asked, holding out his credit card.

She withdrew as though he’d just sneezed on it. “I don’t know.”

“Please,” he said, too exhausted for anything other than begging.

She sighed and took it. “Oh, all right.”